Current Affairs (2007) -
Chronological (432 items)
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| Jul 30, 2007 |
Reform Pot Laws - Do It For 1.5 Million Canadians IT'S TIME to admit that one of the biggest "drug problems" in this country is the obsolete legal framework that criminalizes, stigmatizes and ultimately fails to regulate marijuana use. ...It's time, almost 40 years after the LeDain Commission called for more liberal pot laws, to make the stuff legal. And to get rid of a needless stigma for so many citizens. |
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| Jul 31, 2007 |
Evansburg Man Plans To Sue Police A man from Evansburg is suing the RCMP for seizing marijuana plants he says he was growing for medicinal purposes. Two years ago, Steve Chorney received a licence under the federal medical-marijuana program to grow a limited number of plants to manage chronic pain in his legs, which has prevented him from working since 1996. At about 10 a.m. on July 23, Chorney said three RCMP members arrived at his house in three separate vehicles, made a bee-line for the plants and started pulling them out of the ground. |
| Jul 31, 2007 |
Drugs And The Police In 1967, John Conroy was a clean-cut University of B.C. student and a member of the varsity swim team. It wasn't until after he graduated that he formed the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws ( NORML ) in Canada, becoming its first president....Today, an estimated 600,000 Canadians have been busted for pot possession. A recent United Nations drug report said five million Canadians smoked pot in 2004, the fifth-highest percentage of usage in the world. [ The 600,000 Canadians with criminal records was <a href="http://www.mapinc.org/newstcl/v97/n000/a008.html">true in the early 1990's,</a> but more than <a href="http://www.johnhoward.ca/document/drugs/fact/1.htm" target="_blank">1.5 million are now estimated to have criminal records</a>.] |
| Aug 1, 2007 |
Tougher Controls Not Needed, Experts Say A British study claiming pot smokers have a 40 per cent higher risk of developing psychotic illnesses does not prove tougher Canadian drug laws are needed, experts say. Canadian researchers say stiffer penalties here have traditionally failed to curb marijuana use in a country that has one of the highest per capita number of pot smokers on Earth. |
| Aug 1, 2007 |
We Need To Inform Our Young People About Pot And young British Columbians themselves have to ask: How much less harmful is it to smoke marijuana than regular cigarettes? According to research into long-term pot use released yesterday, smoking a single joint causes the same amount of lung damage as between 2 1/2 and five tobacco cigarettes. That seems to be because pot smokers tend to inhale more deeply and hold the smoke in longer. Also, joints typically do not have filters. [ A good response:<a href="http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/2007/aug/01/new_study_marijuana_does_not_cau" target="_blank">New Study: Marijuana Does Not Cause Psychosis, Lung Damage, or Skin Cancer</a> |
| Aug 3, 2007 |
BC:
Pot Plants Keep User From B.C. Hearing VANCOUVER - A B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has thrown out a complaint filed by a medical marijuana user who objected to a no-drugs-on-the-job policy while seeking work as an extra in the television and film industry. |
| Aug 3, 2007 |
Drug House Forfeited To Crown RCMP Say It Is Most Expensive Home Yet Seized A Surrey drug house worth $723,000 has been forfeited to the state, making it the most expensive one yet. |
| Aug 3, 2007 |
Activist Spreads His Message The journey for justice, which began in Victoria, has Magnuson rollerblading 12,000 miles to Ottawa, where his journey culminates on Remembrance Day. Many commuters may spot the activist rolling along highways and downtown streets, sporting a Canadian cannabis flag on the end of a hockey stick. |
| Aug 4, 2007 |
BC:
Medicinal Pot Grower Sees Huge Demand VICTORIA - A Vancouver Island grower of organic marijuana is being inundated with pleas for pot from disease sufferers, but Health Canada says he can supply only one person, a provincial court trial has been told. Eric Nash said he wrote to Canadian Health Minister Tony Clement with a list of 121 people, all approved by Health Canada to use marijuana as medicine and asking him to grow it for them. One of them was a former RCMP officer diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. |
| Aug 5, 2007 |
Beware of Uninformed Warnings About Risk But let's assume that The Lancet paper really does show that marijuana causes psychosis. And let's assume the increased risk really is as high as 200 per cent. What does that mean? Nothing. Rather, it means nothing by itself. If the lifetime risk of being crushed by an asteroid were to triple, we would ignore it because the original risk is so tiny. But a tripling of the lifetime risk of getting cancer is serious because the existing risk is big. So to make sense of the increased risk of psychosis, we have to know what the existing risk of psychosis is. Without that, these stats are scary but meaningless. |
| Aug 5, 2007 |
Dead Calgary Youth Was Arguing Over Pot CALGARY ( CNS )-- Before he was pushed into the path of an oncoming transit train in Calgary, 17-year-old Gage Jeffrey Prevost was arguing over $10 worth of marijuana, say friends. [Prohibition claims another life. This is the direct result of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that supposedly protects our children from illegal drugs by letting anyone of any age distribute substances to anyone of any age at any time.] |
| Aug 6, 2007 |
Cannabis Country COREN: Quite so. Theft, rape and assault are also apparently unstoppable, so we might as well decriminalize or legalize them as well. Just because something is common does not mean it is acceptable. Individuals who use this stuff privately are seldom touched. It's the dealers who are arrested and quite rightly too. [The lamest prohibitionist argument of them all... how much public support is there to legalize murder? How many government commissions have studied the issue? ] |
| Aug 8, 2007 |
Too Bad the Hippie Generation Has Turned Into a Bunch of Hypocrites Young intellectuals staged sit-ins and demonstrated against rules and structure during the '60s. Now firmly in positions of power, they have established human-rights tribunals and other kangaroo courts to stifle free speech and punish nonconformists. ... The generation that challenged and toppled the rigid status quo at universities now prohibits dissenting views on campus, and blatantly uses the education system for purposes of indoctrination. ... Those who once proudly questioned authority demand absolute acquiescence to radical feminism, affirmative action, climate-change paranoia, anti-Americanism and other tenets of political correctness. ... On top of it, this generation of supposed anti-materialists has accumulated more wealth than any previous generation and made it virtually impossible for anyone under 30 to even dream of owning their own home. |
| Aug 9, 2007 |
BC: Trial to Hear Testimony From Senator Who Backed Marijuana Legalization A Canadian senator who has called for the legalization of marijuana took the stand yesterday in the trial arising from a raid on the Vancouver Island Compassion Society's grow operation. Pierre Claude Nolin chaired the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which unanimously called five years ago for legalization of the drug in Canada. The committee recommended the government license production and sale of marijuana, which would be available to any Canadian citizen over the age of 16. |
| Aug 9, 2007 |
Why Is This Canadian Pot Dealer Campaigning for Ron Paul? He's Looking for a Pardon. Marc Emery agrees his campaign-organizing effort for some 2008 U.S. presidential candidates is a bit unorthodox. He's Canadian, his political base of operations is the B.C. Marijuana Party in Vancouver, and he can be arrested if he sets foot into America. |
| Aug 9, 2007 |
ON:
Church Argues Marijuana A Sacrament CHURCH ARGUES MARIJUANA A SACRAMENT Parishioners Plan Charter Challenge, Say Current Policy Infringes On Their Religious Rights If some religions sip wine at the altar, others should be allowed to smoke pot. At least according to Rev. Edwin Pearson and Rev. Michel Ethier, two ordained ministers behind a proposed $25 million class action lawsuit challenging Canada's marijuana laws. |
| Aug 9, 2007 |
Roach Burn (class action suit) The irony is too delicious. A lawyer named Roach, in this case Charles Roach, taking on the feds' reefer madness pot laws. Roach argues in a class action filed Tuesday ( August 7 ) in federal court that laws making possession of pot illegal have had no force or effect since July 2001. That's when the federal government was ordered to enact a constitutionally valid law. It still hasn't. Roach's suit asks for $25 million in compensation for persons prosecuted under pot laws. Maybe the threat of having to pay out millions in damages will finally light a fire under the feds' asses to stop with their anti-cannabis charade. We're happily holding our breath on this one. |
| Aug 10, 2007 |
BC:
Pot Not a Police Priority, Deputy Chief Testifies at Trial Deputy Chief Bill Naughton said the society's Cormorant Street office of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society has not generated any complaints, adding marijuana ranks behind drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin in terms of Victoria police priorities. ....Also testifying yesterday in Victoria was Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, who chaired the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which called in 2002 for the legalization of marijuana in Canada. Nolin told the court the regulations, as they currently exist, are an obstacle to Canadians who want access to medical marijuana. He said the rules ask doctors to be "gatekeepers" for access to legal marijuana. It's a role doctors don't want, and so Canadians are being denied access to a medical product. |
| Aug 10, 2007 |
ON:
Marijuana Mayhem Whether it's a new townhouse development, a run-down apartment complex or a luxury home in an up-scale neighbourhood, marijuana growing laboratories, ( or marijuana grow labs, as they've come to be called ), continue to appear at an alarming rate in Peel. ...Meanwhile, unlike marijuana labs, methamphetamine ( meth ) labs are new to Peel Police, with the first one ever in the Region being discovered in Mississauga last summer. However, experts believe there are more here. [They only have to look to the US to see that more meth labs appear when it becomes difficult to grow cannabis gardens. People will be longing for the days when they were only living beside plants.] |
| Aug 11, 2007 |
Potmobile Busted In Ferry Lineup WEST VANCOUVER -- It was a business venture worthy of famed '70s potheads Cheech and Chong: Police officers called to investigate a possible drunk driver discovered $60,000 worth of marijuana plants being grown inside a car. The 140 plants -- in two stages of growth -- were being farmed inside a Toyota RAV4. |